Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The playerbase continues to show it's ignorance...

Got this gem from Jud a few days back, and had been meaning to write about it:

"Chin continues to do more good for this game and community than you could even possibly comprehend."

Face it... You defraud players like me, you're a piece of shit in my book, and so is her "employer", (and that is why I call them) Pet Food Cheater.

But it got me to thinking about FFXI and all the other stuff going on therein, and I decided to come up with some analogous (and, frankly, if you believe Jud, equally true!) statements, and to show you why I believe those statements to be equally true.

#1:

"The creator of (Windower/App/NASA/other illegal third party software) continues to do more good for this game and community than you could even possibly comprehend."

Let's get right down to brass tacks here.

First, there are things in this game you cannot take part in without illegal software, and, as long as Square-Enix continues to fraudulently look the other way, that's not going to change.

Without claim bots, you basically are shut out of HNMLS's.

Without Windower, there are mobs that it is claimed you cannot kill (like those who do actions precisely on certain percentages of life totals which will kill the alliance -- PW's final form being one example).

Without other illegal bots, you basically are shut out of the weekly Kupofried's Ring quests, etc.

But we're all supposed to accept this, right?

Bullshit. BUT: If what Jud said is right, these illegal applications would be some of the most important peieces of code in the game, because the game, to many, cannot be played without them.

Which see the jackass who said that if we didn't play with Windower, we could enjoy our $1,000 PS2, because that is what we are playing with if we don't cheat our fucking asses off.

#2:

"The Astral Burners and other 'griefers' continue to do more good for this game and community than you could even possibly comprehend."

This should actually be even easier. In the day and age where the game does not even begin, now, until you hit at least level 75, anything to allow players to level faster is encouraged...

(And, in the day and age where the little Internet pigs basically run roughshod over everyone else, if it stops another player from doing the same, the victory to the AB party/etc. is double!)

So exploits and using those exploits to cockblock other players is actually _good for the game_ in the eyes of a lot of these people.

In fact, if I had a dollar for every person who said that the Salvage banned should never have been touched, I'd have a year's worth of membership fees and then some.

#3:

"RMT continues to do more good for this game and community than you could even possibly comprehend."

I cannot understand how anyone chooses to pat cheaters on the back, then turn around and condemn RMT.

Here's the thing: If you allow players to abrogate the Terms of Service without penalty, you basically are then giving up any right of ownership to the content therein, if you are Square-Enix.

RMT, sickeningly, provides a valuable service to more than a few players in this game -- not unlike the Astral Burn illegal bullshit.

And it provides it to the players in both directions -- buying material, and selling material.

RMT, in fact, offers players the opportunity to advance their characters faster -- the only reason, probably, it not being allowed is that Square-Enix at least puts down on paper their assertion of ownership of their content.

They put a lot of other things down on paper that they fraudulently have no intention of ever enforcing, too.

Anyone who believes the likes of Chinchilla still contribute to this game have to conclude that RMT does so as well -- both to the players in the game who use it, and to the players who, ostensibly, are getting out and want to sell their characters for an ROI.

---

These are just three examples I came up with.

There's a take-home point here.

If the social aspect of Final Fantasy XI is as important as many players indicate it to be, the Terms of Service are null and void, and the only people who can really act to remove players should be the player base themselves.

"Anyone who believes the likes of Chinchilla still contribute to this game have to conclude that RMT does so as well -- both to the players in the game who use it, and to the players who, ostensibly, are getting out and want to sell their characters for an ROI."

No. No, they really don't.

It is possible to acknowledge and appreciate the positive contributions a person brings to the community while also rebuking them for contravening the terms of service. Kaeko is a prime example of this.

It is undeniable that the knowledge of how Enmity works has contributed to how well players can tank mobs, thus contributing to the entire player base with the exception of career soloers. (And even then it contributes to soloers with pets.)

It is equally undeniable that Kaeko knowingly and intentionally violated ToS by partaking in the Salvage duping exploit.

One does not overwrite the other.

(That said, what positive contributions Chin brings to the community, I don't know -- I don't listen to PFA. No particular reason I don't, though.)

You cheated -- so you lose all the position you gained. You lose the contribution you made, because it was made fraudulently.

Kaeko is, in fact, a perfect example -- how much of his research, etc., was done with gear illegally obtained?

Speaking more generally, how many of the "achievements" of these players were done illegally?

You can't applaud their achievement and rebuke their cheating -- the two are basically one and the same.

I watched far too much Magic: The Gathering in the 90's to come to a different conclusion. I remember when my "Enforcer" attitude was deemed so damaging to Milwaukee, WI Magic that the tournament director said I would kill the game in Milwaukee.

A few weeks later, I found out why he said that: Two prominent Milwaukee/Chicago players were barred for a period of time for rigging the ratings system.

Coinkydink? I think not!!

So I disagree entirely with your opinion -- especially because we don't know how much of that research was done with illegally-gained tools, 3PP's, gear, etc.

"If the social aspect of Final Fantasy XI is as important as many players indicate it to be, the Terms of Service are null and void, and the only people who can really act to remove players should be the player base themselves."

No, not really. The Terms of Service are valid. If they matter or not and if they are enforced or not has no impact on their legal validity.

And again, they way things should be != the way things are.

===========

On a separate note, it would comfort me if you would acknowledge that Windower's original function (allowing PC players to Alt-Tab without FFXI crashing, years before the official Windowed Mode was added) did not provide an unfair advantage.

I'm not asking you to condone Windower, mind you. Nor am I asking you to say that the other things alt-tabbing allowed (third-party software affecting the game) are unfair. Nor am I asking you to say that Windower's original function didn't break ToS, since it clearly did. Simply that the ability to alt-tab does not in itself provide an unfair advantage.

"You cheated -- so you lose all the position you gained. You lose the contribution you made, because it was made fraudulently."

This is the key point.

The contribution isn't made fraudulently. It's a real contribution. Someone who manipulates the ratings system can still make a legitimate contribution to the Magic community by creating a new deck type. That doesn't negate the fact that they've manipulated their ratings and thus should be banned from the tourney scene -- but being banned doesn't negate that the player invented, let's say, the Necrodeck. What would negate the contribution of making a deck, would be making a deck that requires cheating to succeed.

The results of the enmity testing do not require cheating to utilize them. Kaeko's contributions are not negated by Karko's violations.

I disagree on the point about enforceability and validity of the Terms of Service not being wholly interrelated.

Why? The social nature of the game, and the question of whether a player should expect or even demand that the rules be enforced.

I have said, and continue to maintain, that the lack of enforcement could realistically be seen as legal and actionable fraud by Square-Enix. If they don't care to enforce the Terms with any degree of consistency, why act in accordance with them at all?

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As far as Windower's "original intent":

I see the whole thing as the "fruit of an illegal tree".

What this means is that, regardless of the "original intent" or further intents, it comes from an illegal source, rendering much of that discussion moot.

Also, consider: There are those who have questioned me as to why I even use the wiki or FFXIAH, believing them to be third-party programs or the like... Consider, in the early days, if you alt-Tab-bed to go to an early iteration of a site like that. Could that have been considered (in that day and age) an unfair advantage??

It's not implausible. I'm not saying such things existed back then, and you would probably be right if they did not.

Volkai, I must disagree with you about legitimacy of the work by illegal players.

Again, how much of his work (and the work of other banned players in general) came using these exploits, 3PPs, dupes, the gear gotten from them, etc. and so forth...

That's one of the main reasons why I can't sit and just separate the work from the illegality, because the illegality, especially as it relates to events in which it is necessary to commit illegality to even participate (HNM's, anyone?), may well be necessary for the work or the gear used to do such work.

The problem with Magic: The Gathering back in the day was that it was pretty much the worst kept secret of all time that you basically had to cheat, to some extent, to become a prominent player. False-shuffle, stack your deck, trade in a limited format, manipulate the ratings, what have you...

I guess it's just that I can't trust people to any real capacity, given the experiences I've seen.

"Also, consider: There are those who have questioned me as to why I even use the wiki or FFXIAH, believing them to be third-party programs or the like... Consider, in the early days, if you alt-Tab-bed to go to an early iteration of a site like that. Could that have been considered (in that day and age) an unfair advantage??

It's not implausible. I'm not saying such things existed back then, and you would probably be right if they did not."

When I originally played, it was with a PS2 in front of me and a PC 90 degrees to the right and two feet away*. Compared to this, being able to alt-tab out of FFXI on the PC you play it on to look at ffxi.allakazham.com or ffxi.somepage.com (the two predominant sites before the wiki and ffxiah) is most certainly not an unfair advantage.

* (They were not connected to each other, just for the record. My old computer was just old and couldn't run FFXI at all.)

"Again, how much of {Kaeko's} work came {from} using these exploits...

That's one of the main reasons why I can't sit and just separate the work from the illegality, because the illegality, especially as it relates to events in which it is necessary to commit illegality to even participate (HNM's, anyone?), may well be necessary for the work or the gear used to do such work."

Maybe my views on how doing something illegal doesn't inherently invalidate it are different from yours. To explain them, I'm going to go far afield from FFXI and M:tG for a minute.

The stories that stand out in my memories from when I was young are things like Schindler's List, Anne Frank, the underground railroad, Rosa Parks, women who masqueraded as men to serve in the military when it was illegal for women to do so. People who broke the law for good reasons, usually effecting positive change through their actions.

Why did I bring this up? It's just that these are where my views on legality and validity were originally informed. It's why I won't see something being against rules or laws as being inherently wrong. Ever.